Israel is winning the war that the West ceded.

Wars dominate the headlines, but maternity wards are quietly deciding the future of nations.

photo: NoCamels.com

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This is a guest essay by Nachum Kaplan, a longtime journalist and commentator who writes the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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Everybody thinks wars determine the future.

Not true — babies do.

Armies win battles. Demography wins centuries.

Long after today’s round of fighting has ceased, after today’s diplomats have retired, after tomorrow’s ceasefire has collapsed, and this week’s headlines have been forgotten, the real story will still be unfolding quietly inside maternity wards. Generals might dominate the history books, but mothers write history just as much.

That may sound sentimental, yet it is anything but. Demography is among history’s least sentimental forces. Historians have long noted that demographic strength underpinned the rise of powers as diverse as 19th century America, post-war Israel, and modern China. Economists from Adam Smith onwards understood that labor, productivity, and population are inseparable.

It determines who fills classrooms, factories, laboratories, universities, tax rolls, and military barracks. It decides whether pension systems remain solvent, whether economies continue growing, whether armies can recruit, and whether nations possess the confidence to plan beyond the next election.

So it is remarkable that so much commentary on Israel remains fixated on missiles, negotiations, and diplomatic theater — while paying comparatively little attention to the one variable likely to shape the region long after every current politician is gone: Israel’s population. And, just as importantly, the Palestinian population.

Much of the developed world, in the West and in Asia, has discovered a revolutionary population policy. They have stopped having enough babies to maintain their populations. In many places people have stopped having families. For example, South Korea’s fertility rate has fallen below 0.8 births per woman. Italy, Spain, and Japan remain well below the replacement level of 2.1, forcing governments into permanent debates about pensions, immigration, and shrinking workforces.

Politicians obsess over economic growth while quietly running out of workers. Against this backdrop, Israel looks almost biologically rebellious.

The Jewish state’s total fertility rate remains around three children per woman, the highest in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and roughly double the OECD average of about 1.5 children. It is one of the few developed countries still reproducing its population without relying primarily on immigration. That alone makes it anomalous.

Yet there is another anomaly that receives far less attention: The Palestinians are demographic outliers, too. Forget the laughable but unfunny “Great Genocide” blood libel. For decades, Palestinian fertility has been among the highest in the Middle East. While birth rates have fallen significantly, particularly in the Judea and Samaria, they remain robust by Western standards, with Gaza maintaining higher fertility than either Israel’s Arab citizens or many neighbouring societies.

This creates one of the Middle East’s great paradoxes. The conflict that dominates international attention is taking place between two societies which continue reproducing themselves while much of the developed world quietly forgets how.

For years, one prediction became almost conventional wisdom. Beginning in the 1980s and continuing well into the 2000s, diplomats, journalists, and prominent demographers repeatedly warned that Israel faced an inevitable “demographic time bomb.” The argument became conventional wisdom in policy circles.

One influential example was Professor Arnon Soffer of the University of Haifa. Israeli and international media frequently cited his warnings. His projections became enormously influential, even though many later required substantial revision as fertility and migration patterns changed. Israel, we were confidently informed, would eventually cease to have a Jewish majority because Arab population growth would overwhelm it, be it Palestinians or Arab Israelis.

It sounded inevitable. Expert graphs were produced. Journalists repeated them with their customary lack of rigor. Activists cited them. Then reality committed one of its recurring acts of discourtesy by refusing to cooperate.

Jewish fertility rose and Arab Israeli fertility declined. Birth rates in Judea and Samaria declined substantially. Large waves of Jewish immigration continued to reshape the population. Since October 7th, applications for aliyah (Jewish immigration to Israel) have risen sharply from Western countries as antisemitism surged, adding yet another reminder that migration responds to history as well as economics. Repeated revisions were required.

Demographic questions have not disappeared — far from it. Israel still faces profound internal demographic challenges involving secular Jews, religious communities, Arab citizens, immigration, labor-force participation and education.

The point is different: Demography is dynamic. People alter their behaviour as economic and political conditions change, cultural expectations evolve, and migration shifts. History stubbornly refuses to follow straight lines simply because a think tank projected one 20 years earlier.

Population alone also guarantees nothing. History is littered with large countries that remained poor and small countries that became rich. What matters is what societies do with the people they have. A growing young population can become an extraordinary economic asset or an extraordinary burden. That depends on institutions.

Israel has spent decades converting human capital into strategic capital: universities, research laboratories, high-tech companies, military wizardry, medical breakthroughs, and enough entrepreneurship to earn the moniker “start-up nation.” Israel spends around five to six percent of GDP on research and development, the highest proportion in the OECD, helping explain why a country of under 10 million people became one of the world’s leading innovation economies.

Population growth feeds an ecosystem capable of transforming people into productivity. The Palestinian story is more tragic. Palestinian fertility once exceeded six children per woman in many areas during the 1990s. It has since fallen markedly, although Gaza has continued to record significantly higher birth rates than most developed societies.

The Palestinians have one of the region’s youngest populations. This youth should be an enormous strategic advantage; young societies possess energy, adaptability and enormous productive potential. Yet young populations require jobs, investment, functioning institutions, stable governance, and educational opportunity. Without those, demographic strength risks becoming demographic frustration.

This is hardly unique to the Palestinians. The pattern has appeared repeatedly across parts of the Middle East and North Africa, where rapidly growing young populations collided with stagnant economies and dysfunctional political systems. Population provides possibility. Institutions determine whether that possibility becomes prosperity. This is where many Western activists foolishly undermine the very Palestinians they claim to champion.

Campaigns to isolate Israel economically are often presented as moral victories, but reality is messier. The Israeli and Palestinian economies remain deeply interconnected. Thousands of Palestinians have worked in Israeli businesses, industrial zones, construction projects, logistics networks, and agricultural enterprises. Complex supply chains rarely respect the simplistic slogans found on university placards. Israel collects tax revenue for the Palestinian Authority, which govern parts of the West Bank.

When activists demand economic disengagement, they imagine they are punishing Israel. Frequently, their main effect is to shrinking Palestinian employment.

Therapy teaches that anxious people often catastrophize today’s crisis while neglecting the deeper patterns quietly shaping tomorrow. Nations display similar cognitive distortions. Governments panic over today’s budget or cabinet reshuffle while neglecting the demographic currents reshaping the next half-century. Meanwhile, birth rates continue doing what they are doing without requiring holding a press conference.

Demographers, of course, possess one unfair advantage over political commentators: They are usually wrong much more slowly. While this is positive for Israel, it does not mean the Jewish state can relax. Its demographic diversity presents immense policy challenges. Each segment of Israeli society possesses different fertility patterns, educational outcomes, labor-force participation rates, and political priorities.

Population growth creates housing pressures, infrastructure demands, transport challenges, healthcare costs, and increased educational needs, not to mention challenges in getting enough people to meet military needs. Managing these successfully will determine whether demographic expansion becomes lasting national strength or merely administrative overload.

Demography is not, despite what the cliche says, destiny. Competence matters. Ultimately, demography is not really about statistics; it is about confidence. Demographers continue debating exactly why birth rates fall, but confidence clearly matters. People invest in children when they believe the future is worth inheriting.

That observation is not absolute. Every family makes deeply personal decisions influenced by economics, health, culture, and circumstance. Yet societies collectively reveal something profound through their willingness (or unwillingness) to imagine future generations. Israel remains unusual because it continues imagining one. The Palestinians do too. That fact alone distinguishes this conflict from many of the ageing societies that comment upon it from afar.

Perhaps that explains part of the fascination. Much of the West debates how to manage decline. Israelis and Palestinians are still debating how to manage growth. Those are very different problems.

Today’s youth will inherit whatever institutions today’s adults leave behind. The true strategic contest is not who just wins the next battle, but which societies transform their growing populations into educated, productive, and resilient citizens. Every nation eventually becomes what it reproduces.

Israel understands that. Hamas understands it too, but in the most destructive possible way. It has long spoken of demography as a weapon rather than as human flourishing. Israel seeks to turn children into scientists, engineers, and soldiers. Hamas has habitually turned children into propaganda, militants, or martyrs. That is about civilizational difference as much as demographics.

Meanwhile, much of the West — preoccupied with today’s outrage and tomorrow’s social-media storm — barely notices the deeper currents flowing beneath history.

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